Friday, August 8, 2014

Women's Clothing and Killing the Right to Education

There is always such a furore about what women wear, and what women want. It looks like dress codes are going to be slapped on us forthwith if the right wing masculinist mafia from all over the country take a position on how women can avoid rape if they dress in a dignified way. What seems really reprehensible is that the length of leg Maharashtrian women show, or the length of waist that Malayali women show while wearing sarees is all going to be under review. It's a hot country. Not wearing a dhupatta is just an option that women sometimes exercise, not anticipating violence from men, for doing a common sensical thing. Men could just be trained not to stare at women's body parts lewdly while on their way to work or coming home.
If they can be trained so easily to kill humans, which routinely happens in all parts of India, as part of some militant ideology, the lust of men to devour women is further fuelled. So women must stay home, and men must go to war to kill all those who don't behave in the way that these self appointed warriors want, seems to be the new plank on which the fuelling of sentiments is headed.

Even in the case of the recent violent
animosity between Dalits and Muslimsin
what were BSP dominated areas, it is communicated by journalists that this is
indeed a new development, as the two communities lived amicably previously
sharing dietary habits, such as the eating of beef without totemic views on the
sacredness of the cow which the twice born have.

The RSS has made substantial inroads into
working class communities as has been proved by their presence in mazdoor
sanghatans. Indoctrination is essentially the drawing into Sanskritic patterns
of behaviour with a promise to provide dividends such as acceptability,
conformity, festival and feasting, wish fulfilment, and sacrifice. This is
quite different from the idea of human rights as a modern device by which
people may ask for Food, Shelter, Medical Rights, Education, and the right to
be heard in a democratic framework of equality. Since the indoctrination of
Tribals happened in the same way, during the Gujarat riots, a new cadre of
workers who could be commanded to kill, became visible. Ofcourse, this is
substantially different from using lumpen proletariat toparticipate in riots, as we saw in the case
of the 1984 riots. There, the Congress was able to use certain key leaders to
propel vast ghettoised slum dwellers to follow the leader into the enclaves or
neighbourhoods where Sikhs were known to dwell, and burn them in some “Ram and
Ravana” metaphorical moment of victorious warfare. Needless to say, the courts
still pursue the cases from that time, to promote the idea that one day, those
tragic families, many of whom lost all their men in one fell swoop, will have
justice.

Rather than spending on education, the RSS
propelled Modi Government is set on providing an impetus to traditional
hierarchies, which allow Kshatriya and Brahman domination, as an ideological
platform, for legitimating their world view. The cosmic world of diversity is
lost. The case of the choice of Army Chief Dalbir Singh, which set up such
tremors because of his known violent handling of North East contexts of
turbulence, the sacking of Kamla Beniwal, at 87 years, with no explanation,
from her post as Governor of Mizoram, because of her frank opinion of Modi’s
way of handling things in Gujarat, are two cases in point. Domination and
persuasive forms of cultural conversion are very much in the matrix of the BJP-
RSS rhetoric. Not to take the people’s opinion into account however, is a grave
mistake. Modi has been quiet on many things, which frankly is a relief. Having
got forty percent of the people to vote for him, he is grateful and generally
stays out of public view except as a state functionary. Hisfinancial policies however, remain open to
analyses, since his delegates are outrightly anti poor, while using the poor
asfodder for work of development.

Take the cut in education. It’s the most
shocking aspect of how little virtue there is in the new government, for it
takes away the right to mobility and leaves the poor to be caught in a status
quo trap, where they can only be landless labour, or manual workers. That is
their fate. Atleast, the Congress government gave them the trickle illusion,
that with Right to Education, they would have the possibility of choosing their
occupations over two or three generations. Even if hundred years was offered as
an optimum time span for social mobility, we must understand that it meant a
lot to poor people.

The new government is least bothered. Give
the poor their jagrans, and a couple of free puris and bowls of sacred halwa,
and the poor will then begin to work for low wages and accept their suffering
as a test of their faith. Send them on orchestrated pilgrimages and let them
recover thewisdom of living in
continual crises as the god given way.

Faith is a personal index of received beliefs.
So if people have not been persuaded by the faith of the masters, then it is
time to understand, that in constitutional terms, these people too, are worthy
of legitimate attention, with regard to jobs and educational opportunities.
Those children crossing a river, by holding onto a brass pot to get to school
was one of the most dramatic news items that Delhi-ites got to read about. They
forded the river, for half an hour, to get to the opposite side, and then
walked a couple of miles to school, helped by their parents. They got totally
wet. Then with soaked clothes, which never dried in monsoon and winter, they
sat in class, reading their books. And yes, they believed in Education.